1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to new and supplemental apparatus, and an additional method of operation, for cargo container handling operations. More particularly, it relates to an apparatus and method for improving the efficiency and safety for cargo container handling by dockside quay cranes by semi-automating a previously xe2x80x9cby handxe2x80x9d performed operation. Specifically, the present invention relates to a new method and apparatus for the installation and removal of inter-box connectors during cargo container handling operations. Still more particularly, the present invention provides an apparatus and method for a semi-automated system for installing and removing IBCs when a cargo container is positioned on a buffer platform instead of installing the IBCs by hand on a suspended container.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The transport of cargo has been revolutionized in recent years by the use of cargo containers to compartmentalize shipments for transport by truck, ship, or rail. The utilization of various types of large high-speed cargo container handling gantry cranes or quay cranes for the purpose of increasing the efficiency of loading and unloading of cargo containers for transport by ship is also well-established in the art.
However, despite the numerous designs, structures, and forms of apparatus disclosed by the prior art, which have been developed for the accomplishment of the specific objectives, purposes, and requirements of cargo container handling by dockside gantry type quay cranes, the devices, machines, and methods which have heretofore been devised and utilized consist basically of familiar, expected, and obvious, configurations, combinations, and arrangements of well-known machinery. This will become apparent from the following consideration of the closest known and relevant prior art.
Shipping companies continually seek ways to reduce the time a ship spends in port involved in berthing operations in order to increase the efficiency of each vessel. Increasing the productivity of berthing operations allows ships to be loaded and unloaded faster thereby effectively reducing the ship""s down time. Efforts are continuously being made to further this objective by improving the efficiency of the quay crane container handling operations and incrementally automating as much of the procedure as possible. The present invention is a significant advancement in these efforts.
Reference is made to FIGS. 1 and 2 of the drawings which show, respectively, a typical dockside berthing operation for a ship and a typical quay crane in operation. The primary container handling equipment is comprised of one or more quay cranes 11 which extend outboard from the dock""s edge 13 across the beam of a ship 15. Cargo containers 17 which have been unloaded, or are to be loaded, are temporarily stored in a stacking yard 19 proximate to the ship""s loading berths. The cargo container handling operations under specific consideration are involved in the transport of containers between a container ship and the adjacent dock for loading or unloading.
In ship loading operations, cargo container transporters 21 such as chassis trucks, trailer trucks, or automatically guided vehicles (AGVs) deliver the containers 17 from the stacking yard 19 to dockside. There, quay cranes 11 lift the cargo containers from the dockside container transporters and move them to the ship 15 where they are lowered into shipboard cells. In ship unloading operations, quay cranes access the shipboard cargo containers from above the ship and lift them out of the cells and move them to the ground level or onto dockside transporters which deliver the containers to the stacking yard where other vehicles or cranes 23 transfer the containers to stacks.
When the cargo containers are lowered into a ship""s cell, they are locked into position therein by inter-box connectors (IBCs) which are secured to the lower corners of each container. The IBCs are installed or removed from the containers during the container loading and unloading operations while the containers are suspended by a quay crane near the ground.
There are two highly interdependent ship berthing suboperations: (1) quay crane handling; and (2) transport vehicle movements between the crane and the stacking yard. A delay in one of those suboperations causes the other to pause and idle which reduces the overall productivity of the entire system. Several factors can cause delays in the two berthing suboperations including: (1) unsteady or irregular quay crane operations; (2) the time required for effecting inter-box connector (IBC) installation and removal processes; (3) delays in stacking yard operations that delay throughput of transport vehicles; (4) the time required for quay cranes performing alignment of containers with transport chassis; (5) congestion of transport vehicles under quay cranes; and (6) various other factors such as machinery operator mistakes or inexperience.
Quay crane container handling rates are measured in cycle rates. Unsteady quay crane operations result because the cranes move containers different distances depending upon the location of the container on a ship varying the cycle rates. As a quay crane loads or unloads each column of containers spaced across the beam of the ship, the hoist travels a longer distance outboard for each successive column of containers and lowers and hoists longer distances for each container located deeper in the stack. The increased traveling distance and stationary time for the hoist, for each successive container, adds to the container handling time and the resulting cycle time. When quay crane handling rates or cycle times are slow, transport vehicles must wait. In those instances where the quay crane handles containers fast and cycle time is short, and if the number of transport vehicles is insufficient for the cycle time, the quay crane must wait.
Delays in stacking yard operations also cause delays in the throughput of container transport vehicles. The vehicles load or unload containers at the stacking yard before returning to the cranes. Disruptions in the flow of transport vehicles to and from the quay crane loading area are caused by numerous factors such as driver inexperience, and lack of familiarity with the apparatus and layout of the yard, as well as yard worker inexperience which can cause the delays in the stacking yard operations. Other delays result when quay cranes expend time aligning a suspended container with a container transport chassis during the container positioning and deposition process and when there is congestion of transport vehicles under the quay crane which slows the rate at which containers are moved to and from the container ship. However, the main cause of delay and loss of efficiency is caused by the inter-box connector (IBC) installation and removal processes which force both quay cranes and transport vehicles to idle. The IBCs are cone-shaped devices that lock stacked containers together on the ship. When quay cranes lift containers from the ship, the IBCs are still attached to the bottom of the container. During the installation and removal procedures, the quay cranes must lower the container until it is a few feet above the port terminal dock level where a worker crew can reach underneath and install or remove the IBCs. A port operator dock worker either takes an IBC from a nearby supply source and lifts it into engagement with a container IBC receptacle, and locks it therein, or he unlocks it from the receptacle and catches it as it falls out of the receptacle and deposits it in a supply depot. Each IBC weighs about 15 pounds (33 kg) and the continual lifting and lowering of the IBCs into and out of engagement with the cargo container corner receptacles, and carrying them to and from the IBC depots, is heavy work for the port operators. This time-consuming work-intensive operation is performed for each IBC receptacle at each corner of every container during both the loading and the unloading of a cargo container transport ship.
During the IBC installation and removal procedures, the quay crane must sit idle while it suspends the container to give the port operator workers access to it. The IBC operations cause a significant amount of quay crane and transport vehicle idle time to be induced into the quay crane cycle time as well as exposing the workers to the possibility of injury from a swaying or dropped container or any other hazards associated with proximity to a lifted load and to continuous transport vehicle movement and operations in close proximity thereby.
In an effort to significantly reduce cycle times, buffer crane operations have been developed by the inventors hereof according to the related inventions identified in the Prior Art section of this specification, supra, which depart substantially from the conventional concepts, designs, and modes of quay crane operation taught by the prior art. In doing so, those inventions provide apparatus and a new method of quay crane suboperation primarily developed for the purpose of improving the overall efficiency of ship berthing operations by reducing or eliminating several of the delay problems described above. A primary advantage of the inventions is that they make possible the ability to remove the IBC installation and removal processes from the quay crane cycle time. The present invention can be utilized with those inventions to further increase the efficiency and safety of any of these improved types of buffer crane designs and their operation by semi-automating the previously xe2x80x9cby handxe2x80x9d IBC installation and removal processes.
Reference is made to FIG. 3 of the drawings which shows a straddle type buffer crane 25 as disclosed in the previously referenced ""320 related patent application which sits under a quay crane. Other types of buffer cranes are disclosed in the ""322 and ""323 patent applications and their method of operation is disclosed in the ""321 application. The present invention can be adapted for use with all of these types of buffer cranes, and any other similar design for the same purpose, as well as their method of operation. The present invention can be installed on the service decks of the buffer cranes disclosed in the ""322 and ""323 patent applications.
The buffer cranes and the method of the related inventions function mainly as a buffer pool by establishing a temporary storage or holding operation between the quay cranes and the transport vehicles which reduces the interdependence therebetween. The buffer operation in effect constitutes a container reservoir between two of three berthing suboperations: quay crane handling and transport between the crane and the stacking yards. The temporary storage reservoir permits the quay crane to take or deposit containers, even if no transporter is available or, conversely, for a transporter to extract a container, or deposit one in the reservoir, even if the quay crane is elsewhere. When one of the two suboperations experiences a delay, the other suboperation continues to work with the buffer operation while the delayed suboperation resolves its problem.
In addition to the advantages of smoothing out container transfer operations between the dockside transport vehicles and the quay crane, which is the primary function of the buffer cranes of the related inventions, is the significant efficiency obtained by completely removing the IBC installation and removal procedures from the quay crane cycle time. With the containers spending time in the buffer pool, the IBC procedures can be performed there if the container holding positions are constructed so as to permit the dock workers to perform the IBC installation and removal processes in the same way as if the container were suspended near the ground by a quay crane. For this purpose, each of the buffer cranes of the related inventions is so designed to permit these processes to be performed while the containers are deposited in the buffer pool. Thus, the IBC installation and removal procedures are completely eliminated from the quay crane cycle time thereby greatly improving the efficiency of the quay crane.
Reference is made to FIG. 4 of the drawings which illustrate a typical cantilever boom type quay crane 11 having one of several possible types of related invention buffer cranes 25 positioned thereunder. The present invention is still a further improvement on the buffer crane concept as it provides means and method for semi-automating the IBC installation and removal procedures on the buffer crane which previously were performed xe2x80x9cby hand.xe2x80x9d It accomplishes the result in a different and improved manner and provides an overall new method and suboperation for the dockside handling of cargo containers.
In view of the foregoing known and obvious disadvantages inherent in the prior art of quay crane cargo container handling and ship berthing operations, presently existing and utilized in seaports, the present invention provides a new apparatus and method for semi-automating the IBC installation and removal procedures wherein the same can be utilized to further improve the efficiency and safety of cargo container ship berthing operations.
The general purpose of the present invention, which will be described hereafter in greater detail, is to provide a new apparatus and function which has all of the advantages of the prior art mentioned above, as well as many novel features that result in new methods of berthing operations, which are not anticipated, rendered obvious, suggested, or even implied by any of the prior art of quay cranes and port berthing operations either alone or in any combination thereof.
The present invention is an inter-box connector (IBC) installation and removal system for a quay crane. It is comprised of at least one predetermined placement position for a cargo container, during container loading and unloading operations, for installation and removal of IBCs. A pair of conveyors are disposed parallel to the position on opposite sides thereof and have carriers formed thereon for transporting and positioning individual IBCs proximate to the IBC receptacles formed in a cargo container when a container is disposed on the position. A jacking means is provided for lifting IBCs being transported in the carriers into engagement with the receptacles or lowering IBCs from engagement therewith into the carriers.
These more important features of the invention have been broadly outlined in order that the detailed description thereof which follows may be better understood and in order that the present contribution to an improvement in the art may be better appreciated. There are additional features of the invention that will be described hereinafter and which will form supplemental subject matter of the claims appended hereto.
With respect to the claims hereof and before describing at least one preferred embodiment of the invention in detail it is to be understood that the invention is not to be limited in its application to the details of construction and to the arrangements of the components which are set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The invention is capable of being created in other embodiments and of being practiced and carried out in various ways. Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed here are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting.
As such, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the conception upon which this disclosure is based may readily be utilized as a basis for the designing of other forms, structures, apparatus, systems, and methods for carrying out the several purposes of the present invention. It is important, therefore, that the claims be regarded as including such equivalent constructions in so far as they do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention.
Further, the purpose of the appended abstract is to enable the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and the public generally, and especially scientists, engineers and practitioners of the art who are not familiar with the patent and legal terms or phraseology, to determine quickly from cursory inspection the nature and essence of the technical disclosure of the application. The abstract is neither intended to define the invention of the specification, which is measured by the claims, nor is it intended to be limiting as to the scope of the invention in any way.
It is therefore an important object of the present invention to provide a new suboperation for shipping port berthing operations to partially automate a previously xe2x80x9cby handxe2x80x9d operation to reduce port operator work-load and increase the safety of port operator dock workers and increase the efficiency of the berthing operations.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a new apparatus and method for a new suboperation for quay crane berthing operations to semi-automate the inter-box connector (IBC) installation and removal procedures.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a semi-automated IBC installation and removal apparatus of a buffer crane operation to increase the efficiency and safety of ship berthing operations.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a new method for semi-automating the IBC installation and removal procedures of a buffer crane operating in cooperation with a quay crane to eliminate the IBC procedures from the quay crane cycle time.
And it is yet a further object of the present invention to provide semi-automated IBC installation and removal apparatus, and a method for operating the same, for a supplemental independently movable buffer crane which can be operated cooperatively with existing quay cranes, without the requirement for additional tracks on the dockside, and which provides a landing deck for containers and supports a supplemental new suboperation to quay crane operations and permits IBC installation and removal procedures independent of the quay crane operations to increase the efficiency and safety of berthing operations.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent when the method and apparatus of the present invention are considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.